Note—this is a parody of an email Mulgrew sent retirees on Wednesday (pictured below). I realize our Very Smart UFT Lawyers won’t understand that. They might claim I’m impersonating Michael Mulgrew. The last time they did that, they threatened me with civil and criminal penalties. Evidently, they deem members (perhaps like them) too dim to know the difference. Offering to prosecute dues-paying members for parody, which is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, is no problem for Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus. My old blog ___domain was blocked, and now I’m here with five times as many readers. So thank you again, Unity lawyers, if you actually got Blogger to block the nyceducator.com ___domain.
Dear Arthur,
It was a great honor to use your dues money for a trip to Florida. I was glad to go there, on your dime, and tell all the retirees that my opponents are full of crap 24/7. I contended, with a straight face, that it wasn’t part of my re-election campaign, just like I did at the DA. In that spirit, I figured I’d use my stranglehold on UFT email to campaign for free, and try to divert you from all the crazy shit I’m actually doing.
When wetry to take your Medicare, we expect applause. When Trump does it, we want you to get out and protest.
We were pretty pissed off when those assholes from ABC started writing about the re-amortization plan that no one was supposed to know about. We want you to know that no money was to be borrowed from our pension funds — and of course, no one from ABC suggested it would be. But it’s easier to rebut an argument no one made than defend the fact we concealed it from you.
Our Unity trustees did multiple presentations to muddy the waters, and did some thing with buckets of money or something. I made the retirees sit through it at their meeting, showed it again at the DA, and then showed it again in Florida. I even got the retiree chapter leader to say it was excellent! But screw him—I took him to Florida, but I’m still not giving him access to union email.
While anything my opponents say is contrived propaganda, even if it’s true, we want you to focus on the federal government. We will not let them take Medicare from our retirees because only we can do that, me and my BFF Henry Garrido from DC37. We’re the same bosses who settle for whatever crap salary patterns the mayor pulls out of his ample hind quarters.
So we want you to focus on the national government taking Medicare away from you, because that’s much better than thinking about when we take it away from you. (And we will, too, if you lose Bentkowski next month. But we’ll act very regretful, and vehemently blame others.)
We are 100% committed to saying we’ll protect Medicare
Next, I want to be clear: we stand in full opposition to anything that seeks to undermine our traditional Medicare. We are the only union as of right now that has submitted paperwork saying we oppose it. Of course we submitted it incorrectly, so it counts for nothing, but why nitpick? Remember to watch what we SAY, not what we DO. (Don’t believe anything Norm Scott says to the contrary.) We believe the current court case will be successful, but if it were to be overturned, we have a plan. We can’t tell you what it is yet, but TRUST US. We’ll figure something out, maybe, like charging you 200 a month each, dumping you into “Medicare Advantage” (MA) and claiming it’s better, or both.
Hey, I’ve got great empathy for you old folks. I think you’re hilarious. That’s why I personally seek out District Representatives who send out ageist memes about you. Take a look at these. Are they funny or what? I mean, that guy is a real hoot! I’m proud I hired him. When I saw those pictures I laughed and laughed...but I mean, I did it in a good way. And when our asshole opponents chose not to respect our sacred right to ridicule old people, we just had the guy get up at Executive Board and say he loved his grandma or something. Everyone in Unity applauded him, and we took no action against him whatsoever.
So screw you if you can’t take a joke.
Anyway, yada yada yada, seniors need some kind of health care. They want medicine, and they want to stop paying so damn much for it under the crappy plan we saddle them with. But hey, I bring in at least five times what they do, so no skin off my apple. Under my presidency, I made a promise to myself and to our members to keep our retirees safe from any premiums, and instead tried to charge them 200 bucks a month, each, to keep what they had, because that’s not a premium.
It’s only 5K per year, per couple, to start. I also imposed co-pays for the first time ever. But those assholes in NYC Retirees kept going to court, over and over. We’ve filed an amicus brief on the side of the city and jeez I hope you bastards lose, because, as a result of my shrewd bargaining, I owe Mayor Adams 600 million a year, forever. I have no clue what I’m gonna do if I can’t force you guys to pay for it.
We oppose legislation that would protect Medicare, but it’s for your own good.
As your union, we want to protect you from evil influences like that tenacious termagant, Marianne Pizzitola. That’s why we had our faithful Unity retirees heckle her at a meeting. Who the hell does she think she is, going to court and thwarting our plans to leave your health care in the hands of a frigging slave insurance company? While her stupid bill, Intro 1096, would protect your health care and restore it without co-pays, we oppose it. We made sure to lobby against it and endorse City Council members who would oppose it too. Why?
We’re the frigging Unity Caucus, and we can do any Damn Thing We Please.
You’d best believe it, Jack. Not only are we gonna kill 1096, but we’re also gonna scuttle state legislation designed to preserve your health care! And we’re still gonna demand you vote for us. That’s the kind of folks we turned out to be!
Remember, the Taylor Law, which does not apply to retirees, says that no elected body can pass legislation that changes the terms, conditions and benefits of any collective bargaining agreement, none of which apply to you, and which, incidentally, you get no vote on. That’s gospel, etched in stone, unless we want it to circumvent a collective bargaining agreement, like we want to do with the para bill. We’re not doing the same for you because you guys can go suck eggs for all we care.
Passing Bill 1096 would screw up our plans to dump you in some inferior Medicare Advantage and say, hey, we opposed it so it wasn’t our fault. This could leave us stuck finding some other way to pay for our boneheaded deals— like a re-amortization scheme, for example, which we oppose “at this time,” but not some other time. We absolutely cannot have that. You guys are old! What are you gonna do with money? Buy shuffleboard equipment? New dominoes, with fancy colored dots? No matter how "popular" this bill may seem, we say it’s no good, so don’t vote for ABC, because ABC will fight to frigging pass the thing and protect retirees instead of the caucus system.
As members of Unity Caucus, it’s our divine right to gaslight you.
There is misinformation. There is disinformation. We have to utilize both. Sometimes we act like we don’t understand we’re working against your interests. Other times we gaslight you, like making ridiculous arguments about the Taylor Law applying to those no longer employed by the city.
Please ask yourself about the motivations of outside influences who are not members of the UFT and have never been connected to our union. They can’t email you and pretend they aren’t campaigning for re-election, but I can. I will do or say absolutely anything to retain my highly paid gig, and have people on staff who can write stuff like this I can sign my name to. Remember, I’m the one who moved to dump retirees into Medicare Advantage, and I’m the one who imposed co-pays on your Medigap plan.
Please vote for me. I haven’t worked in a real classroom for over twenty years, and I couldn’t stand losing the election. After all this time sitting in a nice office, I wouldn’t last five minutes as a teacher. I hate questions, and in a classroom there’d be no microphone to turn off! I’d have to retire with nothing but my city pension, my huge UFT pension, the millions of dollars I’ve socked away, and the various patronage gigs AFT and NYSUT owe me.
I am a retiree of DC37 I emailed them aletter, stating, truthfilly, I had read Chapter14 of NYS Civil Service Law, Public Employees Fair Employment Act, aka the Taylor Law. I told them there was nothing in Intro1096 contravening that law , asking them to provide citations. I also asked where MLC was allowed to negotiate health benefits. There was no response from Garridos allies.]
Thank you Arthur (and Daniel for the graphics)! Mulgrew and his smart People have a sick notion of Union that needs to be shot down --and this is parody at its finest. Truthfully I don't know how he/they can look themselves in the mirror.
I am a retiree of DC37 I emailed them aletter, stating, truthfilly, I had read Chapter14 of NYS Civil Service Law, Public Employees Fair Employment Act, aka the Taylor Law. I told them there was nothing in Intro1096 contravening that law , asking them to provide citations. I also asked where MLC was allowed to negotiate health benefits. There was no response from Garridos allies.]
Thank you Arthur (and Daniel for the graphics)! Mulgrew and his smart People have a sick notion of Union that needs to be shot down --and this is parody at its finest. Truthfully I don't know how he/they can look themselves in the mirror.